My initial experience of Alt-J nearly drove me mad. I happened upon “Hunger of the Pine” in September 2015; downloaded it, and it kept me awake for nights afterwards. This haunting tune locked itself into a dark recess in my brain, resilient to all my attempts to dislodge it. A sleepless embrace indeed. It was such a powerful melody I had to skip over the tune on my playlists for a while, just to increase my chances of getting some proper night rest.

But it found its way back and the more I listened to it, the more I fell in love with it. It’s like a classical tune, changing and developing at the song goes on. I was intrigued – what else had this band produced? I listened to the full album “All This Is Yours” and I was immediately hooked. Then quickly “An Awesome Wave“, then, then – no! That’s all they had. This band only released their first album in 2012. There is a maturity to their music that would imply they had been around forever,

The songs are sublime. Tesselate, Breezeblocks, Left Hand Free, Something Good, Taro and Every Other Freckle are some of the best songs in my library. I never get tired of them. The musicality, the complexity, the dreamlike nature of many of the tunes – it’s mesmerising. I’ve become a fan.

So, 2017 is wonderful on two fronts for me. Firstly, they are coming to Dublin in July and secondly, they have just released their third album “Relaxer“. I downloaded it with some trepidation – what if it wasn’t as good as the previous two? I shouldn’t have worried. It’s brilliant.

There is not a duff song on the album. Echoes of Pink Floyd and The Clash on some songs perhaps, but the music is very much their own. I particularly love Deadcrush, Adeline and In Cold Blood.